Expectedly, Coach Ranko started a strong team in our opening match for the Shopee Cup. Rather unexpectedly, our team seemed completely off as they struggled to adapt to a terrible pitch that was reminiscent of Toa Payoh Stadium on its worst days. However, in this short piece (I still haven’t packed for Jordan and I leave tonight), I will talk about some observations of mine and why I don’t feel we can say that the defeat only came because of the pitch or because of other factors such as poor refereeing.
Terrible Pitch
The pitch looked bad before the game, but it was only when it started did we see how bad it was. Both sides struggled with the ball, but of course our Sailors struggled with it even more. You could see it in the passing – gone was the usual zip in our passes, or any pretty passing patterns. Our players were underhitting or overhitting their passes, struggling to make sense of the pitch. There seemed to be a certain fear, a certain tentativeness, and our opponents seemed to cope much better with the pitch as the game went on (even if it did screw up a couple of their own attacks due to the unpredictable nature of the bounce of the ball when dribbling/passing).
But I won’t go so far as to blame the pitch – I think as a team, we have to adapt better.
First, this is not even Borneo FC’s home stadium – so we can’t even say they are much more familiar with the pitch than we are. They just adapted to it way better.
Second, I think it is on the players and the management to see how they can prepare better for such games. The Shopee Cup takes us to different parts of Southeast Asia, with differing financial standards, and differing standards of facilities. Unlike the ACL last season where we travelled to Hong Kong and South Korea and played in world-class stadiums, the Shopee Cup will bring with it days like last night’s. Could the coaching team have arranged training sessions in Choa Chu Kang Stadium to try to prepare for such games? In Singapore, we’ve been somewhat spoilt with the predictable nature of artificial turf and also the nicely-manicured surfaces in our Mattar Road training centre. Our big-name players as well, will have been brought up in world-class academies. This is not something they will be used to – let’s learn from this and prepare better next time.
Third, could the in-game tactics be tweaked to not just counter, but take advantage of this pitch? In this kind of game, you need to take advantage of the unpredictability, and avoid getting caught in build-up play. Shawal Anuar should have been brought on earlier. You avoid alot of the problems of getting caught in possession by going a little more direct, and Shawal is exactly the sort of player you want chasing down long diagonal passes.
Just go back to an article on this website about 1.5 years ago – we wrote about how Shawal has a great first touch. But unlike the feted first touches of players like Iniesta and Berbatov where they kill the ball dead and then play it, Shawal is an expert in using his first touch to beat players by knocking it past them. I’ll let you read our analysis back then.
All in all, a very disappointing failure to adapt to the conditions was one of the main factors that led to last night’s result. It’s still very early, so let’s learn from this.
Not a Second Yellow Card
Rui’s first yellow card was deserved. The second? If that’s a yellow card, everytime I shake hands with someone I should be sent to prison. Absolute nonsense. The slightest of contact left Berguinho rolling on the floor like a …. I don’t quite know what would do justice to this sentence. He rolled on the floor like a thing. Like a thing conceived after Neymar had a lovechild with a rolling pin.
Anyway, there was barely any contact and it came a minute after Rui was shown the first yellow. Surely the referee could have given him a talking-to even if he felt it was a bad challenge?
We weren’t playing that well and I wouldn’t dare say that had Rui stayed on the pitch, we would definitely have overcome the deficit and equalised or even won the game. But a bad decision is a bad decision, and the referee made a huge error here.
Individual Errors – Team Responsibility
I am quite annoyed by the constant chatter surrounding our defenders / midfielders after a defeat. It’s always sack this guy, replace that guy, bench this other guy. Rui made 2 big errors last night. The first was when he failed to track Gaucho at a setpiece, and he scored. We knew about their prowess from crosses and setpieces, so I think Rui should be very disappointed by what happened. He has his hands on Gaucho, then suddenly, without much happening at all, he inexplicably loses him and Gaucho scores – not the ideal way to open the game.
The second is a little more unfortunate. A low cross is played in, and the idea is absolutely correct – instead of hammering it clear, Rui tries to play a pass around the corner for a very-free Hami Syahin. It would have undoubtedly led to a good counter-attack if the ball was used properly. I said in the preview article that Borneo FC is susceptible to the counter-attack, so who knows what would have happened if that pass came off.
Alas, it didn’t. The ball took some unpredictable bounces on the turf, and Rui got it caught in between his feet. The son of Neymar and a rolling pin couldn’t believe his luck, and tucked it in with ease.
Undoubtedly, these were his errors. And he deserves some criticism for them. But let’s not just forget the good games he had for us, or forget our midfield situation. Sometimes fans will say Hami is overrated, Hariss is old and slow, and Anu is too rash. Now if you’re gonna criticise them all, and criticise Rui as well, then who do you actually want in our midfield? Rodri? Zidane from 20 years ago?
While we’ve invented a fantastic time-travelling wild-dreaming machine, why don’t we bring back prime Fiona Xie and oh oh oh also go back to stop Meghan Trainor, Nickelback, Imagine Dragons and Iggy Azalea from pursuing music careers so that our brains and ears are that much purer?
Ok sorry for that rant that went off in a real weird direction. Back to your regular programming.
I am not saying that players cannot be criticised – we do a lot of criticism here on this website as well. But let’s be fair. If every midfielder is bad to you, maybe you’re having too high expectations, or only seeing their flaws without appreciating their good points.
Also, why are our defensive players the ones getting criticised so much more than their attacking counterparts? Where is the criticism for Maxime who didn’t hit a meaningful shot on target all evening? How about for Bart Ramselaar? Their mistakes are made further upfront where a goalscoring contribution would have helped to mask the defensive deficiencies last night. They are as responsible for the defeat as everyone else on that team.
The players win as a team, and last night, they certainly lost as a team. I can’t pick out anyone who I can say really excelled. Let’s stop finding scapegoats for the performance – it’s unhealthy from a human perspective, and from an intellectual perspective, I’m sure we Sailors fans can do better than that too.
Conclusion
The team sucked. Yes, we had disallowed goals, but they were rightly disallowed. And you don’t get half-points for disallowed goals.
What will come as some consolation is I felt the team did well to not get humiliated after losing a man so early in the second half. In fact, we created the better chances before Bailey’s error led to a second goal for Gaucho. Brilliant goal by the way.
On to Albirex at the weekend, where I expect a lot of rotation to occur. Let’s get that win.
Written by Eddy Hirono
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